The MIT roots of Google’s new software

Google's App Inventor, which lets people with no previous programming experience build applications for mobile phones, draws on decades of MIT research.

In July, Google released a trial version of new software, called the Google App Inventor, intended to let people with no previous programming experience design applications for phones that use Google's Android operating system. The software has provoked much commentary in the technology press, and Google has been trumpeting it as a way to give people direct control of their own phones. But App Inventor is the latest outgrowth of a tradition of MIT research that dates back at least 40 years.

The App Inventor project was led by Hal Abelson, the Class of 1922 Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, who spent a sabbatical year at Google as a visiting professor. Instead of having to write traditional computer code, users of App Inventor can create programs by snapping together virtual, color-coded instruction 'blocks.' For instance, to add a button to an application, the user would drag the button block into App Inventor's workspace window and determine the button's visual properties by selecting from pull-down menus. Then, to determine what the button will do, the user would snap a block that defines a function — like emitting a noise, or making a phone call, or changing the screen's background color — into the button block.

The App Inventor blocks are based on the MIT master's thesis of Ricarose Roque, for which she built a general version of a programming interface that Eric Klopfer, the director of MIT's Teacher Education Program, had developed for a simulation program called StarLogo. StarLogo, in turn, began as the PhD thesis of Mitchel Resnick, who heads MIT's Media Arts and Sciences Program, and whose graduate advisors were Abelson and Seymour Papert, a pioneer of educational computing.

Papert, who came to MIT in 1963, is most famous for inventing Logo, a simple computer language designed to introduce young children to the principles of programming. Initially, programs written in Logo would guide a robot with a pen attached to its undercarriage — a 'turtle' — across a sheet of paper, executing a drawing. In the late 1960s, when Abelson was a graduate student at MIT, he helped Papert begin testing the system in Boston-area schools.

From Logo to Lego

'You really have to try hard to get into the mindset of that time, because a computer in those days was something that cost several million dollars,' Abelson says. 'And the idea that you would take the most advanced computing research equipment around anywhere, and you would let fifth graders … start playing with it, it was just mind boggling. For the first 10 years of that, people just thought we were nuts.'

But that changed in the 1980s, Abelson says, when personal computers started invading elementary- and secondary-school classrooms. Many of today's software-company executives first learned the principles of programming from a later version of Logo, in which a virtual turtle executed drawings on a computer screen.

Resnick's PhD thesis was an extension of Logo called StarLogo, which enabled the interaction of hundreds or even thousands of turtles in complex simulated environments. 'I was particularly interested in issues around emergent phenomena and decentralized systems,' Resnick says. 'How do bird flocks work? How do the individual actions of individual birds lead to the behavior of a flock? Or how do ant colonies work? Or how do traffic jams form? Or how do market economies work, where there's lots of individual buyers and sellers, but you get these larger-scale patterns that develop? I was interested in helping people understand how large-scale patterns arise from lots of local interactions. That's always been a very difficult thing for people to understand. So the idea was to try to provide a way for people to play with those ideas by giving very simple rules to lots of individual objects.'

After graduating, Resnick became a professor in the MIT Media Lab, where he began developing a Logo-like system that would allow children to program robots built from Lego bricks with electromechanically activated moving parts. The project ultimately resulted in Lego's Mindstorms kits. But along the way, an undergraduate named Andy Begel, who's now at Microsoft Research, developed a graphical programming language — a precursor to the App Inventor's programming blocks — as a way to let kids program their Lego robots more intuitively.

Crosstalk

Begel's system influenced the software for Mindstorms, and Resnick and Klopfer have continued to expand on its central ideas, for two different projects. Klopfer's is a 3-D adaptation of StarLogo called StarLogo TNG, which can be used to build video games, among other things. Resnick's is Scratch, a successful educational system, launched in 2007, that allows children to design their own interactive stories and games for the Web. 'We've been able to stay in touch about what's going on, and we're now having a chance to revisit what we were doing and making version two of both of our projects,' Klopfer says. 'We made some different design decisions along the way, and I think that was really great as research projects, because we can really learn from each other's successes and failures.'

For her master's thesis, Roque decoupled Klopfer's programming blocks from StarLogo, so that they could be reused in other software systems — and indeed, they were the basis for the App Inventor programming interface. And because Scratch is so popular — hundreds of thousands of registered users have used it create more than a million projects — members of Resnick's group have been consulting with Google about how to build an online community around the system.

But beyond using actual code that was developed at MIT, Abelson says, the Google App Builder project was also motivated by the same philosophy that drove Papert's 'nutty' experiments in the 1960s. 'It strikes me that most of the people who are teaching introductory programming have gotten out of step with the reality of how kids experience computing,' Abelson says. 'It's not about sitting at a desktop computer. It's about these incredibly powerful computers that you now carry around with you that can do location-aware things, and they can find your friends, and they can make phone calls and do other stuff. App Inventor, as an educational program, is about giving young people who are trying to learn about computing power over the real computing that they're using in their lives.'

Larry Hardesty, MIT News Office

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O3Spaces Summer Showcase: Easy document management

Summer time..... a time to relax, kick back and enjoy the weather, and yet business continues almost as usual. Still there's a subtle difference. During summer time you may find the time to check out new and exciting developments and allocate some time to try out new technology. In order to accommodate this 'exploration time' with a sunny context, O3Spaces has composed a special Summer Showcase virtual appliance.
This special Summer Showcase Vmware appliance is available from a special website, where one can download a pre-configured virtual machine that will let you get acquainted with O3Spaces Workplace and all its latest and greatest features in the sunny context of a business use case.
The Summer Showcase will let you try all O3Spaces features and discover O3Spaces' benefits in the context of concrete use-cases. No time is wasted on installation and configuration efforts, and all new Workplace features are included and pre-configured.
The O3Spaces Summer Showcase is actively supported by local O3Spaces partners. These partners (listed on the summer showcase website) will be available to actively support testers during the testing period.
The O3Spaces Workplace Summer Showcase is available at http://summershowcase.o3spaces.com.

O3Spaces' current Workplace 3.2.2 release again sports a number of novelties such as Zimbra ZCS 6 integration, CMIS support, OpenSearch enhancements and new online document viewing features.

About O3Spaces
O3Spaces B.V. is an established Dutch software company dedicated to delivering powerful yet easy to use, open software solutions.
Launched in 2006, O3Spaces Workplace now is the document management & document collaboration solution of choice for customers around the world. Its ability to support office collaboration across platforms and office suites is unrivaled. O3Spaces Workplace provides its documents management & document collaboration solutions for SMB's, government- and educational- organizations, as well as throughout large companies.

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IBM and McMaster University Collaborate on “Smarter Transportation” Research

HAMILTON, ON and MARKHAM, ON, Embedding a "super" microprocessor from video games into cars will provide drivers with traffic management information McMaster and IBM (IBM) have launched a research project to investigate how the automotive industry can connect a vehicle's multiple microprocessors, which currently work in isolation, to create a "cognitive car" that can predict vehicle failures before they happen, redirect drivers to less congested routes and help reduce traffic accidents.

Engineers at McMaster will study how using a single IBM multi-core processor to integrate what are currently disconnected automotive systems could improve vehicle efficiency and driver safety, as part of a Shared University Research (SUR) Award from IBM. IBM's multi-core processor is a "super" microprocessor capable of performing many complex calculations simultaneously. It was originally developed for video games but now has applications for financial services, energy exploration, information-based medicine, digital animation and oil and gas production.

The research will focus on integrating data from sensors and microprocessors in the vehicle and on roads to help drivers reduce accidents. In addition, researchers will look at how this same system can give drivers real-time visual information and alerts to take alternate routes, to reduce driver tension, road congestion and emissions related to stop-and-go traffic.

Dr. Alan Wassyng, acting director of the new McMaster Centre for Software Certification and McMaster's Software Quality Research Lab and an associate professor in the department of Computing and Software, will lead a research team of faculty and graduate students, and work with automotive industry partners and several other Ontario universities on the project.

"To date, our research has focused on safety-critical software in industries such as nuclear energy and medical devices, but increasingly, the automotive industry is adding functionality to vehicles that is safety-critical," says Dr. Wassyng. "Investigating how a powerful multi-core processor could be applied to manage that functionality will go a long way in helping build a smarter car that helps drivers operate their vehicles more safely and efficiently."

The program will also study how this increased computing power can help vehicles better integrate into regional and global transportation systems, including roadside service, traffic management, air quality management, and emergency services. The research team will use IBM Rational software, used extensively by the automotive industry to design, deliver and manage software throughout the course of the study.

"This project with McMaster University is an important step in advancing intelligent transportation," said Karen Newman, Americas Automotive Industry Lead, IBM Global Business Services. "While cars today generate a great deal of information, IBM believes connecting that information can change the dynamic of the commute."

IBM Shared University Research Awards Program

IBM's Shared University Research awards program strives to connect the research and researchers at universities with IBM Research, IBM Global Services and IBM's development and product labs. The SUR Awards program is designed to, among other things, increase access to and successful use of IBM technologies for research and in curriculum.

More information about IBM's University Programs is available at www.ibm.com/press/university.

McMaster University

McMaster is one of four Canadian universities listed in the Top 100 worldwide, and is renowned for its innovation in both learning and discovery. It has a student population of 23,000 and more than 140,000 alumni in 128 countries. For more information about McMaster University and the Faculty of Engineering, visit: www.eng.mcmaster.ca.

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Nokia and Pearson form wireless educational venture in China

Beijing Mobiledu Technologies to provide English-language learning and related services

London, UK and Espoo, Finland - Nokia, the world leader in mobility, and Pearson, the world's leading education company, today announced the formation of a joint venture, Beijing Mobiledu Technologies, to accelerate the growth of Mobiledu, the premier mobile phone-delivered education service, developed by Nokia in China.

Launched in China in 2007, Mobiledu is a mobile service that provides English-language learning materials and other educational content, from a variety of content providers, directly to mobile phones. Customers can access the content through an application preloaded on new Nokia handsets, or by visiting the service's mobile website and most other WAP portals in China.

Since its launch, Mobiledu has already attracted 20 million subscribers in China, with 1.5 million people actively using the service each month. Mobiledu will continue to be delivered to customers in China through a range of channels, including Nokia's Ovi Store.

The new joint venture company will combine the world-class expertise of Nokia in mobile devices and services, and Pearson's industry- leading assets and expertise in education, to deliver a wide range of services to meet the high demand for education in China. Headed by Angela Long, formerly head of Mobiledu at Nokia, the Beijing-based company will begin operations immediately.

Robert Andersson, Senior Vice President and head of Corporate Alliances and Business Development at Nokia, said:

"We are proud to have developed a service which is already highly valued. We believe that through this partnership with Pearson, a global industry leader in education, we can offer an exciting future for this service and its customers."

John Fallon, Chief Executive of Pearson's International Education business, said:

"China is the world's largest mobile phone market and the country with the largest number of people learning English. This is a great opportunity to combine Pearson's English language learning and wider educational services with the mobile technology capabilities of Nokia to meet this demand and help a larger number of people achieve their aspirations."

About Nokia

Nokia is a pioneer in mobile telecommunications and the world's leading maker of mobile devices. Today, we are connecting people in new and different ways - fusing advanced mobile technology with personalized services to enable people to stay close to what matters to them. We also provide comprehensive digital map information through NAVTEQ; and equipment, solutions and services for communications networks through Nokia Siemens Networks.

About Pearson

Pearson (NYSE: PSO), the global leader in education and education technology, reaches and engages today's digital natives with effective and personalized learning, as well as dedicated professional development for their teachers. This commitment is demonstrated in the company's investment in innovative print and digital education materials for preK through professional learning, student information systems and learning management systems, teacher development, career certification programmes, and testing and assessment products that set the standard for the industry. The company's respected brands include Scott Foresman, Prentice Hall, Addison Wesley, Benjamin Cummings, the Stanford Achievement Test series, the Wechsler family of assessments, SuccessNet, MyLabs, PowerSchool, SuccessMaker and many others. Pearson's comprehensive offerings help inform targeted instruction and intervention so that success is within reach of every student at every level of education. Pearson's commitment to education for all is supported by the global charitable giving initiatives of the Pearson Foundation. Pearson's other primary businesses include the Financial Times Group and the Penguin Group. For more information, go to www.pearson.com.

www.nokia.com

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

It should be noted that certain statements herein which are not historical facts, including, without limitation, those regarding: A) the timing of product, services and solution deliveries; B) our ability to develop, implement and commercialize new products, services, solutions and technologies; C) our ability to develop and grow our consumer Internet services business; D) expectations regarding market developments and structural changes; E) expectations regarding our mobile device volumes, market share, prices and margins; F) expectations and targets for our results of operations; G) the outcome of pending and threatened litigation; H) expectations regarding the successful completion of contemplated acquisitions on a timely basis and our ability to achieve the set targets upon the completion of such acquisitions; and I) statements preceded by "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "foresee," "target," "estimate," "designed," "plans," "will" or similar expressions are forward-looking statements. These statements are based on management's best assumptions and beliefs in light of the information currently available to it. Because they involve risks and uncertainties, actual results may differ materially from the results that we currently expect. Factors that could cause these differences include, but are not limited to: 1) the deteriorating global economic conditions and related financial crisis and their impact on us, our customers and end-users of our products, services and solutions, our suppliers and collaborative partners; 2) the development of the mobile and fixed communications industry, as well as the growth and profitability of the new market segments that we target and our ability to successfully develop or acquire and market products, services and solutions in those segments; 3) the intensity of competition in the mobile and fixed communications industry and our ability to maintain or improve our market position or respond successfully to changes in the competitive landscape; 4) competitiveness of our product, services and solutions portfolio; 5) our ability to successfully manage costs; 6) exchange rate fluctuations, including, in particular, fluctuations between the euro, which is our reporting currency, and the US dollar, the Japanese yen, the Chinese yuan and the UK pound sterling, as well as certain other currencies; 7) the success, financial condition and performance of our suppliers, collaboration partners and customers; 8) our ability to source sufficient amounts of fully functional components, sub-assemblies, software and content without interruption and at acceptable prices; 9) the impact of changes in technology and our ability to develop or otherwise acquire and timely and successfully commercialize complex technologies as required by the market; 10) the occurrence of any actual or even alleged defects or other quality, safety or security issues in our products, services and solutions; 11) the impact of changes in government policies, trade policies, laws or regulations or political turmoil in countries where we do business; 12) our success in collaboration arrangements with others relating to development of technologies or new products, services and solutions; 13) our ability to manage efficiently our manufacturing and logistics, as well as to ensure the quality, safety, security and timely delivery of our products, services and solutions; 14) inventory management risks resulting from shifts in market demand; 15) our ability to protect the complex technologies, which we or others develop or that we license, from claims that we have infringed third parties' intellectual property rights, aswell as our unrestricted use on commercially acceptable terms of certain technologies in our products, services and solutions; 16) our ability to protect numerous Nokia, NAVTEQ and Nokia Siemens Networks patented, standardized or proprietary technologies from third-party infringement or actions to invalidate the intellectual property rights of these technologies; 17) any disruption to information technology systems and networks that our operations rely on; 18) developments under large, multi-year contracts or in relation to major customers; 19) the management of our customer financing exposure; 20) our ability to retain, motivate, develop and recruit appropriately skilled employees; 21) whether, as a result of investigations into alleged violations of law by some former employees of Siemens AG ("Siemens"), government authorities or others take further actions against Siemens and/or its employees that may involve and affect the carrier-related assets and employees transferred by Siemens to Nokia Siemens Networks, or there may be undetected additional violations that may have occurred prior to the transfer, or violations that may have occurred after the transfer, of such assets and employees that could result in additional actions by government authorities; 22) any impairment of Nokia Siemens Networks customer relationships resulting from the ongoing government investigations involving the Siemens carrier-related operations transferred to Nokia Siemens Networks; 23) unfavorable outcome of litigations; 24) allegations of possible health risks from electromagnetic fields generated by base stations and mobile devices and lawsuits related to them, regardless of merit; as well as the risk factors specified on pages 11-28 of Nokia's annual report on Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2008 under Item 3D. "Risk Factors." Other unknown or unpredictable factors or underlying assumptions subsequently proving to be incorrect could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Nokia does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except to the extent legally required.

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SES Chooses SlingPath SNG Training

Ongoing Initiative To Minimize The Global Interference Problem Affecting Viewers and Broadcasters

BeaconSeek Ltd, the UK-based satellite consultancy and training company, today announced that SES, one of the world's leading providers of fixed satellite services, has purchased a substantial number of training places on BeaconSeek's SlingPath SNG (satellite news gathering) online training program as part of the satellite industry's Satellite Interference Initiative to reduce satellite Radio Frequency Interference (RFI).

Interference is a growing problem in the satellite community, globally affecting broadcasters and viewers alike, and a key component of the Satellite Interference Initiative is increasing SNG uplinking expertise through more training and certification.

SlingPath (slingpath.com) is BeaconSeek's innovative competency-based online SNG training and certification program. It is used by a number of broadcasters including Fox News, ABC News, C-SPAN, Al Jazeera, and Nine Network Australia, as well as by many freelance SNG operators.

'SES regards quality technical training of the type that BeaconSeek provides as a key tool in our efforts to continually improve our industry's management of the shared RF spectrum resource.' said Stewart Sanders, SVP Customer Service Delivery at SES. 'BeaconSeek has produced a technically excellent and accessible product which we are eager to take advantage of. We consider the use of such training as key in the ongoing cross-industry Satellite Interference Initiatives that SES and other major operators have been actively involved in. This training will be used in concert with other training packages to continue the education and abilities development of our technical staff and thereby improve the Quality of Service provided to SES's customers.'

The SlingPath course is aimed at the absolute beginner to intermediate level, taking the student through the basics of satellites, how they are used in newsgathering, the various key technical parameters and critical component parts of an SNG system, and how to work with satellites.

The SlingPath presentation of the material is highly graphical, interactive and user-friendly, with potentially complex subjects presented in a fashion that makes it approachable to even the most techno-phobic participants.

In particular, the program has been designed for those who are required to operate the latest generation of 'auto-pointing' SNG systems, which enable operators with negligible training to access satellite capacity, but in doing so masks a significant amount of the technical aspects of the actions being undertaken.

Jonathan Higgins, Managing Director of BeaconSeek, says 'We are especially pleased that SES has come onboard after their valuable involvement in the original beta-testing of the SlingPath online training program. We are very proud to be attracting the world's leading satellite operators to use our innovative online training program. We wholeheartedly support SES and all the other satellite operators involved in the Initiative to tackle the increasing problem of satellite interference and the inconvenience caused to broadcasters and viewers worldwide'

SlingPath was launched in 2007 by BeaconSeek in collaboration with e-Blended Learning Solutions of New Zealand, specialists in designing web-based training for remote learning applications.

SlingPath has been endorsed by both SUIRG (Satellite Users Interference Reduction Group) and WBU-ISOG (World Broadcasting Union – International Satellite Operations Group) as meeting their high standards for the training of operatives in SNG.

About BeaconSeek
BeaconSeek is a consultancy, training, project management, and systems integration firm based in the UK but working globally, specializing in the use of satellite and wireless technology for mobile & fixed networks, particularly for SNG, VSAT, & microwave applications. BeaconSeek provides solutions for corporate and government communications via the use of VSAT networks, as well as broadcast newsgathering & event coverage for television, radio, and the web.

About SES
SES is the world's pre-eminent satellite group. A network of satellite operators located across all continents, SES operates primarily through SES ASTRA in Europe and, SES WORLD SKIES in North and South America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. SES also holds participations in a number of satellite operators including SES SIRIUS in Sweden, QuetzSat in Mexico, Ciel in Canada, O3b Networks based in Jersey, The Channel Islands and, in a number of satellite service provision companies. Through its global satellite fleet, reaching 99% of the world's population, SES offers regional strength and expertise on a global scale.

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